"Oh, don't mention it!" exclaimed the Wolf; "no doubt we shall find something for dinner presently—don't you think so, children?" he asked, turning to the others.
"I was going to say," recommenced the Outcast, "that I could not ask you to eat just here, but I was actually on my way to invite you to a big feeding."
The Timber Wolf bared his fangs in a grin of derisive unbelief. His comrades blinked at one another solemnly. "Was there ever such a liar?"
A'tim coughed nervously and continued his politic address. "I heard your powerful bay, Pack Leader, hours ago, as I was attending to a little trailing matter I had on hand, and resolved to invite you to the Kill when I had located the trailed one."
"That's good news," answered the Wolf, "for we are wondrous hungry," and he edged closer to the Outcast.
A'tim shrank into a very small parcel on the log. "I, too, have been sick for the need of food. I have starved, actually starved, for a moon; why, I am nothing but skin and bone; the smallest creature, even a weasel, would find it difficult to fill his stomach from my lean ribs. Besides, I have eaten off a plague-stricken Rabbit but a day since, and my blood is on fire—though there's not much of it, to be sure. I'm filled with the accursed plague poison—I believe there's enough of it in my poor, thin body to bring to their death a whole Wolf Pack."
"That's serious!" exclaimed the Gray Wolf; "but you'd die anyway, so it doesn't matter—I mean, never mind about that just now. Gh-u-r-r-h! what of this great kill?"
"Well, Brother Wolves——"
"Brother Wolves?" questioned the other with a sneer-tinge in his gruff voice; "thou art overthick in the shoulder for a Wolf."